I started thinking about my own Santa photos as I couldn't recall ever visiting Santa for photos as a child. However, a look through my family photo albums shows a love of Santa that started for me at an early age!
This photo is of me and my Dad- my fist time seeing Santa at the Plunket Christmas Party. I was 14 months old here, and obviously unsure of Santa! Plunket is a local organisation that looks after new mums and their babies, and is a huge part of growing up in New Zealand.
Santa features prominently at Plunket Christmas parties- here I am with my twin sister. We always had matching outfits growing up, and my mum sewed some amazing clothes for us to wear.
This photo made me smile when I saw it- this was taken again with my twin sister (I am wearing the blue headband) at the local supermarket. The reason I love this photo so much is that now my boys have had their photo taken with Santa at the exact same supermarket this year. I was hoping to post that photo but I have not received it yet, but will update when I do! It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that some of my experiences with Christmas will be replicated with my children.
This photo is another Santa in a shop with my twin sister- do you sense a theme here? While we may not have had many professional posed Santa photos, we did have a lot of opportunities to get Santa photos in our local community. That's what I love about living in my childhood town- the spirit of Christmas comes alive locally and all of our neighbours, teachers and friends come together to make sure the children have some amazing experiences.
It was so much fun to walk down memory lane and see how much of my love of Christmas came from my childhood. Now that I have children of my own, I want them to experience the magic of Christmas. We do fun things each year such as meeting Santa and choosing an ornament for the tree, and I recently came across a beautiful website called Patience Brewster. Her ornaments, paintings and handmade gifts are breathtaking, and have so much detail. This rooster ornament will look perfect on my tree as I love all things poultry related, and the Chicken Teapot is on my wishlist! My boys loved the Mini Candy Cane ornament, as my oldest son declared it was the coolest candy cane ever due to the glitter shoes! This website captures the magic of Christmas so well for both children and adults, and would be perfect for gift giving or as a feature for your own tree or holiday decorating.
Christmas for my children this year is quite bittersweet as my son turns five today, and already the magic of Christmas is being lost on him. Doing family and Christmas related activities is a great way to keep the excitement in December, as well as create my own family memories so that one day I can show them photos for them to also have fantastic Christmas memories. Local events, retailers in our area and beautiful Christmas themed items help me to bring Christmas into our lives each year.
Do you have any favourite Christmas memories? What type of things do you do with your children to create memories? I would love to know!
I did not know you were a twin! There are so many bloggers that are twins, it is unreal :) My son is 8 and still sort of kind of believes in Santa, I am afraid this will be the last year :( Sniff. How fun to do a flash back on your photos with Santa!
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